The objective of this proposal is to study the emergence of different types of reading disabilities in high risk-kindergarten-aged children, including children with early language impairments and children from socially disadvantaged environments. Our view of health is broadly conceived and includes the cognitive and neurolinguistic development of children, especially as it relates to subsequent scholastic performance. Many studies have hypothesized that preschool children with oral language disorders are at risk for the development of reading disabilities. Unfortunately, these studies are not conclusive because of failure to address (a) types of preschool language disorders and reading disabilities; (b) variability in definitions of language impairment and reading disability; and (c) excessive reliance on arbitrary exclusionary criteria, particularly social disadvantage. In addition, more information is needed on the growth and development of reading-related language skills (i.e., phonological awareness) in children with language disorders. To address these issues, we propose to identify 160 5-to 6-year-old children who are socially disadvantage (N=80) and socially advantage (N=80). Within each of these larger cohorts, children will be allocated to 4 groups (N=20) of language ability: 1) non-language-impaired (NLI); 2) impaired in phonological awareness (PA only); 3) impaired expressive syntax (E); and 4) impaired in syntactic comprehension (SC). Each child will be followed every 6 months for 3 years to measure growth of a small set of reading-related skills, at which time they will receive a battery of psycholinguistics and neuropsychological tests which time they will receive a battery of psycholinguistics and neuropsychological tests which is the basis of a classification of reading disorders developed by this Program Project (see Project I). Completion of this project will address four specific aims: 1) relationship of early language impairment and later reading disability; 2) influence of social disadvantage on the development of language and reading disabilities; 3) development of phonological awareness skills from a growth perspective; and 4) validity of discrepancy definitions of language impaired children.